At present, Braille display devices are usually used for transmitting and receiving information by blind or visually impaired people. Refreshable Braille displays are electromechanical devices that form dots of Braille characters on a flat surface, which can be read by tactile receptors on the tips of fingers. These devices operate as keyboards having a software, manual controllers and actuators connected as an additional device to a computer via USB or Bluetooth interface. However, such devices are very expensive and cumbersome, and they do not allow for mobile and situational communication of visually, hearing and voice impaired people to other people.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,571,020 discloses an education device for assisting in the learning of keyboarding. The device includes sets of gloves and indicia applied to the fingers of the gloves to provide pictorial and alphanumeric representations of the computer keyboard. The visual and tactile memorization of the glove images are complemented by auditory and associative memorization provided by a story-telling educational method. However, the disclosed device is not intended for communication of visually, hearing and voice impaired people to other people using Braille, and does not allow for such communication.
The closest analogue of the inventions disclosed herein is an information input device and method disclosed in the patent of the Russian Federation No. 2141685. The described device comprises tactile elements placed on a support and connected to the controller, wherein at least one tactile member is disposed and fixed on at least one phalanx of at least one finger by the support, i.e., flexible or elastic one, and the tactile element is disposed in the area of access of the terminal phalanx of the thumb of the same hand. Thus, tactile elements with conductive coating are arranged as a Braille information matrix and comprise tactile sensitivity sensors, such as electromagnetic vibration devices, facing the skin surface of the fingers. The described apparatus is quite complicated since it contains Braille matrix within each of the tactile elements, while receiving information using such matrixes does not provide a clear interpretation of the received information.